I found out recently that in my city there is now one major bookstore. One. I knew they'd been closing, but I never imaged it had come to this. I live in a major city. we have no less than ten movie theaters walking distance from my apartment (I counted them). Why does this concern me so much? I can buy books online can't I? Yes I can and I find entertainment in places other than in text sometimes but there is a reason I stopped going to the movies and can count the shows I like that haven't been canceled on one hand. It's because quality entertainment just isn't profitable.
What I mean by this is that it's no coincidence that movies are all a jumbled pile of shit that watch like four directors were fighting over what kind of movie they were making. cross genre entertainment is the profit game. All a movie has to do to make money is get people to show up. They don't have to actually like the movie. If you throw in something for everyone, more people show up. All it costs you is the movie's artistic merit. It's the same with plot. Why have a meaning, why be intricate when you can just make fights and explosions. The average movie patron wants to relax and not engage themselves to watch a movie. Shows are the same and music is getting there. Available music is already there. major video game makers follow the same logic, just produce some worthless shovelware that's good enough to get buyers.
I'm not speaking from a perspective of arrogance. I am far from brilliant but even I can see this happening. It isn't hopeless of course. Indie game makers are producing meaningful innovative and fun games, amateur film festivals feature meaningful content, the internet is filled with cotnent that wasn't made for profit.
It hasn't escaped my notice that the same goes for bookstores. Though you can get a meaningful work published, maybe, if you want to be sold in the front you have to publish nonsense. It's no coincidence that a little less than half of the most meaningful works I've ever read were fanfiction. Now I know, most fanfiction is shit. I know this very well, but you may be surprised at how much of it is really good.
What point am I trying to make here in all this I hear you ask. It's merely this: producing something meaningful and genuinely well made is not profitable in the world of art forms and we have made it that way with our choices. There are those that produce art for the sake of it, but something is lost when talented artists cannot make a living the way hacks can. When skilled actors are out of work but young fools who make you feel good about yourself by comparison make millions. When good content is doomed to obscurity while absolute garbage is hailed as innovative. I could have split this off and bitched about the number of awful first person shooters, awful action movies, nonsense biographies, shitty reality shows, but I chose to keep it vague. I didn't want to dictate the reality to you so much as I wanted you to awaken to what you already notice. Have I done anything?